Section 1

The chapters of this booklet might with equal fitness be entitled "The Story of Evolution,"
but I prefer the above heading because it carries with it rather the idea of continuous
existence, since the process of evolution for man is unfinished. In fact, the human race
is in an early stage, our planet itself being not far beyond the midway point of its life.
The subject matter is almost entirely a transcription from H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret
Doctrine, her own language so far as possible being used, to avoid any deviation
from her meaning. It is an attempt to place consecutively the teachings of the ancient
wisdom regarding human life on this planet, which she so courageously and with such consummate
skill brought to the Western world.

The Secret Doctrine is a mine of information which seems literally inexhaustible,
for the more one develops, the more he discovers in its contents. The whole range of human
thought is there illuminated. Every sentence is aglow with possibilities, and knowledge
in all directions is so profuse in her writings that the mind at first is overwhelmed
and bewildered by the magnitude of her work. In speaking of theosophy in Volume 1, pages
272-3, she says:

But modern science believes not in the "soul of things," and hence will reject the whole
system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy
of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands
of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the
traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and
exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity.

The effort in that which follows, while adhering strictly to the text, will be to sift
out from the many related facts which enrich this marvelous work an outline of what she
has told us regarding our ancient selves, and to arrange the events in chronological order
for the benefit of those too occupied to read the whole. References to volume and page
will enable those who wish to do so to verify or amplify the subject from The Secret
Doctrine.

If the whole human family knew and realized its history, the entire aspect of life would
change. A new dignity, a new sense of responsibility, a new courage would transform this
unhappy world into a paradise. Each would see in others something deeper and greater than
he sees now. The grooves of discord which are cut so deeply into our human minds, would
no longer serve as channels for thought. And wars would cease of themselves — would
melt away — having nothing to feed upon.

It goes without saying that the ancient wisdom is based on the unity of all life, without
which it could not be wisdom. Among its fundamental teachings is that of the universal
rhythmic expression of life, shown in alternate periods of activity and rest. When these
relate to the great worlds in space, they are poetically described as the Day and Night
of Brahma. But this, like every other inherent habit of being, is repeated throughout
the scale from universes to atoms, like a pattern growing ever smaller. "As above, so
below" is the old Hermetic axiom. Hence "reasoning from analogy" is often the clue which
starts the searcher after truth on the right road.

The larger part of The Secret Doctrine is a commentary on "The Stanzas of Dzyan,"
an archaic record to which the Western world has not heretofore had access. I shall quote
some of them presently, but first will give a description of the coming of the Night —
a Night which might apply to any world, or to one of the several great Nights which come
to this Earth on her journey — in the words of Vamadeva Modelyar, taken from
The Secret Doctrine (1:376) — quoted from Isis Unveiled:

Strange noises are heard proceeding from every point. . . . These are the precursors
of the Night of Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon, and the Sun passes away behind
the thirteenth degree of Makara (sign of the Zodiac). . . . Gradually light
pales, heat diminishes, uninhabited spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes more
and more rarefied; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted,
the ocean shows its sandy bottom and plants die. Men and animals decrease in size daily.
Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished
one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish.
Surya (the Sun) flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma
merges back into Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, and, his task being accomplished, he falls
asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in and continues until the future dawn.

In the Stanzas of Dyzan, the drama opens with the dawn, as follows:

Stanza I

1. "The Eternal Parent (Space), wrapped in her ever invisible robes, had slumbered once
again for seven eternities."2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom
of duration.3. . . . Universal mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi (celestial
beings) to contain (hence to manifest) it.4. The seven ways to bliss (Moksha or Nirvana)
were not. The great causes of misery (Nidana and Maya) were not, for there was no one
to produce and get ensnared by them.5. Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for
Father, Mother and Son were once more one, and the Son had not awakened yet for the new
wheel and his pilgrimage thereon.6. The seven sublime Lords and the seven Truths had
ceased to be, and the Universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in Paranishpanna (absolute
perfection, Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grub) to be out-breathed by that which is and yet
is not. Naught was.7. The causes of existence had been done away with; the visible
that was, and the invisible that is, rested in eternal non-being, the one being.8.
Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless
sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that All-Presence
which is sensed by the "Opened Eye" of the Dangma. — The Secret Doctrine,
1:35-46

. . . . . . .

Stanza II

1. . . . Where were the builders, the luminous sons of manvantaric dawn? . . .
In the unknown darkness in their Ah-hi (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic)
Paranishpanna, the producers of form (rupa) from no-form (arupa), the
root of the world — the Devamatri and Svabhavat, rested in the bliss of non-being.
2. . . . Where was silence? Where were the ears to sense it? No! there was neither
silence, nor sound. Naught save ceaseless, eternal breath (Motion) which knows
itself not.3. The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the germ;
the matri-padma (mother lotus) had not yet swollen.4. Her heart had not yet
opened for the one ray to enter, thence to fall as three into four in the lap of Maya.
5. The Seven (Sons) were not yet born from the Web of Light. Darkness alone was
Father-Mother, Svabhavat, and Svabhavat was in darkness.6. These two are the Germ,
and the Germ is — one. The Universe was still concealed in the Divine Thought and
the Divine Bosom. — 1:53-61

Stanza III

1. The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude. The mother swells,
expanding from within without like the bud of the lotus.2. The vibration sweeps along,
touching with its swift wing (simultaneously) the whole universe, and the germ
that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes (moves) over the slumbering waters
of life.3. "Darkness" radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the waters,
into the mother deep. The ray shoots through the virgin-egg; the ray causes the eternal
egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal (periodical) germ, which condenses into
the world egg.. . . 6. The root of life was in every drop of the ocean
of immortality (Amrita) and the ocean was radiant light, which was fire and heat
and motion. Darkness vanished and was no more. It disappeared in its own essence, the
body of fire and water, of father and mother.7. Behold, oh Lanoo! the radiant Child
of the two, the unparalleled refulgent Glory, Bright Space, Son of Dark Space, who emerges
from the depths of the great Dark Waters. . . . He shines forth as the Sun.
He is the blazing Divine Dragon of Wisdom. . . . Behold him lifting the Veil,
and unfurling it from East to West. He shuts out the above and leaves the below to be
seen as the great Illusion. He marks the places for the shining ones (stars)
and turns the upper (space) into a shoreless Sea of Fire, and the One manifested
(element) into the Great Waters.. . .10. Father-Mother spin
a web whose upper end is fastened to Spirit (Purusha), the light of the one Darkness,
and the lower one to Matter (Prakriti) its (the Spirit's) shadowy
end; and this web is the Universe spun out of the two substances made in one, which is
Svabhavat. — 1:62-83

. . . . . . .

Stanza IV

1. Listen, ye Sons of the Earth, to your instructors — the Sons of the Fire. Learn
there is neither first nor last; for all is one number, issued from no number.2. Learn
what we who descend from the Primordial Seven, we, who are born from the Primordial Flame,
have learned from our Fathers. — 1:86-8

What follows is to the Sons of the Earth from their Instructors.

In accordance with the law of analogy, these Stanzas would apply to any denouement,
whether of earth, of sun, of greater universes; or to the many periods of rest and activity
throughout the life of our planet, earth. Of the great manvantaras (or periods of manifestation)
it is said, "millions and billions of worlds are produced."

The Commentaries on the above Stanzas give a long account of the formation of worlds and
shed a flood of light on problems which vex our scientists and which they have failed
to solve. But it is not the purpose of these papers to transfer this part of the subject
matter except in so far as it has a direct bearing on the ancient history of man.

These first Stanzas are quoted as a starting point because they carry an atmosphere which
tends to lift one out of his own small personality into a finer, purer air, into an open
unclouded space where he can study himself dispassionately and so more truly. With the
vivid and majestic picture these simple, graphic words bring before the mind's eye, comes
also a conviction of their truth. They are not born simply out of a trained imagination,
but are charged with the aroma of truth and authority. And volumes could not tell more
exhaustively or with greater completeness the fact of the Brotherhood of man as of all
life. To this latter purpose all of H. P. Blavatsky's works are directed.

For us, the story may begin with our migration to this planet. Our old home, which we are
told was the ancestor of our present moon, is now a corpse in process of disintegration.
Ages upon ages have passed since its monads moved in orderly sequence to the bosom of
their "Eternal Parent" to slumber there for seven eternities.

"The last vibration of the seventh eternity" thrills through space. The hour for this new
world to be born strikes and life stirs through all the sleeping monads. Many changes
and transformations take place before work on the new world is begun and then prepared
for the various grades of life which are destined to use it.

Monad is a term which has been employed by various philosophers from the Neoplatonists
to Bruno, to Van Helmont, and Leibniz, with various shades of meaning. In the ancient
teachings it refers to the essential essence of an entity, the core of the self;
the quintessence; the subjective reality; the pith and marrow of being into which
all potentialities are withdrawn during the Night of Life and from which all the various
vehicles (corresponding to the evolutionary development so far reached) are emanated during
the Day of Life. In the case of man, the physical body is the last, the grossest, of such
vehicles — all of which crumble as the consciousness which called them together is
withdrawn, to reassemble at the same bidding when the hour for a new cycle strikes.

Before saying more as to the monads, it will be necessary to outline their journey on this
earth, as the terms for the different cycles must be used even to describe the transference
from one planet to another. The earth, as indeed was also the case with the moon, and
all worlds, is said to consist of seven globes called a planetary chain. Every monad must
pass seven times around these globes, each turning being referred to as a round. In going
from one globe to another, there is a period of minor obscuration, analogous to the great
pralaya, or rest, depicted in the Stanza quoted above; and between every two rounds there
is a longer and deeper "Sleep of Brahma," in which all life retires to re-emerge again
at the dawn for a new round. It is difficult to convey through the brain-mind these deep
spiritual truths. Intuition, imagination, and the brooding faculty must be called into
service. Thus these globes are described in several different ways. More truly, perhaps,
they represent different rates of vibration, analogous to the seven grades of consciousness
within man. We can catch the suggestion by reflecting that when the body is asleep, the
consciousness is quite differently centered from what it is during the day. With this
caution, it is safe to refer to the diagrammatic picture below.

The Globes are placed in a circle: globes A and G at the top, both on the same spiritual
plane of consciousness. B and F come next, one on each side of the circle; C and E, still
lower; and at the bottom is globe D — our limit of material consciousness. It is
on this globe that we are now functioning. Every monad descends from A to D, and the rises
from D to G. The movement must be imagined as a spiral, because on the upward journey
the Ego carries all the experience gained on the downward, so that though A and G are
on the same spiritual plane, the consciousness and development of a monad on G is much
beyond that which it had on globe A. Further, there are seven races on each globe, with
their special characteristics, through which every monad passes, and each race has seven
great sub-races besides a large number of off-shoots, so that even the experience on one
globe of one round is enormous, and enough to make one breathless in contemplating its
immense sweep. The exact age of our planet is not given, but enough is revealed to show
that the dreams of science are dwarfed by the reality. According to the ancient computation,
the life of a planet (i.e., its seven rounds) is called a Day of Brahma,
which covers 4,320,000,000 of our mortal years. After its long Night which is of equal
length, it reimbodies itself with all the lives that belong to it, each succeeding chain
of globes being on a higher level than the last. All of which is premature in this narrative,
but it gives a hint, to start with, of the immensity of the life of a planet, and clears
away the vagueness of terms necessary to use in describing the migration to earth.

And now, to return, the monads appear in the order of their development. One learns in
studying theosophy, how gradually and thoroughly nature proceeds in all her works. It
is taught that the monads cycling round any septenary chain are divided into seven classes,
according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness, and merit. It is the
most advanced class which leaves the moon first, passing ultimately, i.e., after its long
rest and after the various changes which result in its formation, to globe A, where it
is imbodied in the lowest kingdom, and the time-spaces are so adjusted that when the seventh
class of the old chain is transferred, the first class is ready to pass on to globe B;
and so on, all around the chain.

The result of this is, that it is only the first class of Monads which attains the human
state of development during the first Round, since the second class, on each planet, arriving
later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient
human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round.
But at this point — and on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be
fully developed — the "Door" into the human kingdom closes; . . .
. For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point will, owing to the
evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will reach the human
stage only at the close of the seventh and last Round. They will, therefore, not be men
on this chain, but will form the humanity of a future Manvantara and be rewarded by becoming
"Men" on a higher chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this
there is but one solitary exception, for very good reasons, of which we shall
speak farther on. But this accounts for the difference in the races. — 1:173

Elsewhere we are told that humanity is just one race beyond the midway point of earth's
journey, being now on the fourth globe of the fourth round, and near the midway point
of the fourth Sub-race of the fifth root-race. This shows how very gradual was the transference
from the old world, whose principles and life-forces, as it died, passed, after an aeonic
repose, into the corresponding globe of the new chain. For a world is not a mass of dead
matter, but is an entity, with a septenary nature just as has man, having its birth, youth,
and old age.

It is said that the planetary chains have their "Days" and their "Nights" — i.e.,
periods of activity or life, and of inertia or death — and behave in heaven as do
men on Earth: they generate their likes, get old, and become personally extinct, their
spiritual principles only living in their progeny as a survival of themselves. — 1:154-5

Echoes of this ancient teaching reach us through some of the older religions, where such
terms as Mother-Earth, the Spirit of the Earth, etc., are in constant use.

Our Earth, as the visible representative of its invisible superior fellow globes, its
"lords" or "principles" . . . has to live, as have the others, through Seven
Rounds. During the first three, it forms and consolidates; during the fourth it settles
and hardens; during the last three it gradually returns to its first ethereal form: it
is spiritualized, so to say. 1:159

The same is true of men, the children of earth. The monads pass through all the forms of
being up to man, on every globe in the three preceding rounds, becoming gradually more
material, each during the first three being the shadowy prototype of the round to follow:

the preliminary, hardly defined, and evanescent sketch on the canvas, of objects, which
are destined to receive the final and vivid form under the brush of the painter. . .
. On strict analogy, the cycle of Seven Rounds, . . . [is] repeated on a microscopical
scale in the first seven months of gestation of a future human being. . . .
As the seven-months-old unborn baby, though quite ready, yet needs two months more in
which to acquire strength and consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during
seven Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of mother-Nature before he is born,
or rather reborn a Dhyani, still more perfect than he was before he launched forth as
a Monad on the newly built chain of worlds. — 2:256-7

Having outlined in broad terms the general plan, the next chapter will begin the story
of the monads.

Section 2

The monadic host from the moon may be roughly divided into three great classes:

1. The most developed Monads (the Lunar Gods or "Spirits," called, in India, the Pitris),
whose function it is to pass in the first Round through the whole triple cycle of the
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms in their most ethereal, filmy, and rudimentary
forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed
chain. They are those who first reach the human form (if there can be any form in the
realm of the almost subjective) on Globe A in the first Round. It is they, therefore,
who lead and represent the human element during the second and third Rounds, and finally
evolve their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round for the second class, or those
who come behind them.2. Those Monads that are the first to reach the human stage during
the three and a half Rounds, and to become men.3. The laggards; the Monads which are
retarded, and which will not reach by reason of karmic impediments, the human stage at
all during this cycle or Round, save one exception which will be spoken of elsewhere as
already promised. — 1:174-5

The modern mind will not grasp at first all that is implied in the term "Monad." For help,
one can brood over the First Fundamental Proposition, and try to realize that basically
there is but the one life; that there is nothing else; that it is space itself, boundless
and infinite; and that from its every point emanate the potentialities of the whole. The
monad is of this divine essence.

It is not of this world or plane, and may be compared only to an indestructible
star of divine light and fire. — 1:174n

the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless,
form what we, in our ignorance, call the "Individual Monads" of men. — 1:177

It cannot be said to develop, yet around it gather higher and higher forms of
life through its infinite embodiments. It passes from the lowest kingdoms up to the highest
spiritual, yet is ever one and the same monad:

The Monad is a drop out of the shoreless Ocean beyond. . . . It is divine in
its higher and human in its lower condition — the adjectives "higher" and
"lower" being used for lack of better words — and a monad it remains at all times,
save in the Nirvanic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. . .
. the Kabalists say correctly that "Man becomes a stone,
a plant, an animal, a man, a Spirit, and finally God. . . ." But by "Man," the
divine Monad is meant, and not the thinking Entity, . . . — 2:186

The above suggests an interpretation of the quotation from the Laws of Manu, in
Isis Unveiled (2:263), by H. P. Blavatsky, as follows:

Plants and vegetation reveal a multitude of forms because of their precedent actions;
they are surrounded by darkness, but are nevertheless endowed with an interior soul, and
feel equally pleasure and pain. — I.49

And from The Secret Doctrine:

Everything in the Universe throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious:
i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind. . . . There is
no such thing as either "dead" or "blind matter," . . . — 1:274

The, number seven upon which the universe is built also appears in the kingdoms, there
being three elemental ones below the mineral which we know. It will be seen that the whole
process of development presents wheels within wheels, every stage running through all
the forms over and over again. For example, every globe is the arena of an evolution,
similar to the last, only repeated each time on a higher scale, and all its monads share
in the experience. Again, each round develops one element.

Thus, in the first Round, the globe, having been built by the primitive fire-lives,
i.e., formed into a sphere — had no solidity, nor qualifications, save a
cold brightness, nor form nor color; it is only towards the end of the First Round that
it developed one Element, which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence became
now in our Round the fire we know throughout the system. . . .

The Second Round brings into manifestation the second element —
air. . . . "From the second Round,
Earth — hitherto a foetus in the matrix of Space — began its real
existence: it had developed individual sentient life, its second principle. . .
."

The Third Round develops the third principle — water;
while the Fourth transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the
hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. — 1:259-60

To one trained in nineteenth century science, perhaps the most unexpected feature of evolution
as here given is its spiritual nature. It is the divine that shines through all. Matter
is but the outer covering of spirit, and even matter, being born from the same source,
being its other pole in fact, is spiritualized. There is no chance or haphazard arrangement.
Every detail of growth is directed from within outward, by intelligence, by law, by compassion.

The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies
of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform. . . . They vary infinitely
in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence; and to call them all pure
Spirits . . . is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings
either was, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past
or a coming cycle (Manvantara). — 1:274-5

as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different group of so-called
"Creators" or "Architects," so is that of every globe; i.e., it is under the
supervision and guidance of special "Builders" and "Watchers" — the various Dhyan-Chohans
. — 1:233

the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our
planetary chain. They are, moreover, said to send their Bodhisattvas, the human correspondents
of the Dhyani-Buddhas . . . during every Round and Race. Out of the Seven Truths
and Revelations, or rather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as we are
still in the Fourth Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas so far. — 1:42

Likewise man is "the handiwork of hosts of various spirits" — as to his form, his
physical matter, his moral, psychic, and spiritual nature. Further, his body is composed
of countless myriads of lives.

Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of both man and animal
are swarming with bacteria. . . . But Science never yet went so far as to assert
with the occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones
are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, except larger species, no microscope
can detect. . . . Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same
infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain
and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him
from the sun. Each particle — whether you call it organic or inorganic — is
a life. — 1:260-1

All of this will be given later in more detail; and now we shall return to the monads from
the moon.

The lunar deities or pitris fashioned the physical man, while the agnishvattas or kumaras
are solar deities, lords of the inner man. Very little is told in detail of human
evolution before the beginning of our fourth round. No doubt the conditions would be difficult
for us to conceive, and in any case, do not here so much concern us. The earliest rounds
were devoted to the developing of the kingdoms below the mineral, all of which, of course,
are an essential part of our present bodies. Each round foreshadowed the coming kingdoms,
evolving that which was to become a mineral, a plant, an animal, a man, and approaching
form more and more in each round. Through all of these states the lunar monads passed
until knowledge of their conditions became instinctive and absolute. The more advanced
monads, as was said earlier, preceded — the enormous period of three and a half rounds
being necessary for the arrival of all.

The most developed Monads (the lunar) reach the human germ-stage in the first Round; become
terrestrial, though very ethereal human beings toward the end of the Third Round, remaining
on it (the globe) through the "obscuration" period as the seed for future mankind in the
Fourth Round. — 1:182

These are they who became the pioneers for the future human race — but only in its
physical aspect, as will be explained later.

But before this comes to pass, there were enormous periods when conditions were gradually
shaping themselves, when many exotic exuberances of the forces not yet marshaled into
order, came into being — forms and events evidently not a part of the general plan.
The fourth round had started; the early beginnings of human life were imminent. The earth
is represented in the Stanzas as being impatient.

Stanza I

2. Said the Earth, "Lord of the Shining Face (the Sun) my house is empty. . .
. Send thy sons to people this wheel (Earth). Thou hast sent thy seven sons to
the Lord of Wisdom. Seven times doth He see thee nearer to Himself; seven times more doth
He feel thee. Thou hast forbidden Thy servants, the small rings, to catch Thy light and
heat, Thy great Bounty to intercept on its passage. Send now to Thy servant the same!"
— 2:273. Said the "Lord of the shining Face." "I shall send thee a fire when
thy work is commenced. Raise thy voice to other Lokas, apply to thy Father the Lord of
the Lotus (Kumuda-Pati) for his Sons. . . . Thy people shall be under
the rule of the Fathers (Priti-pati). Thy men shall be mortals. The
men of the Lord of Wisdom (Budha, Mercury) not the sons of Soma (the
Moon) are immortal. Cease thy complaints. Thy seven skins are yet on thee. . .
. Thou art not ready. Thy men are not ready." — 2:444. And after great throes
she (the Earth) cast off her old three and put on her new seven skins, and stood
in her first one. — 2:46

Stanza II

5. The Wheel whirled for thirty crores (of years, or 300,000,000). It
constructed rupas (forms). Soft stones, that hardened (minerals); hard
plants, that softened (vegetation). Visible from invisible, insects and small
lives (sarisripa, svapada). She (the Earth) shook them off
her back, whenever they overran the mother. After thirty crores of years, she turned round.
She lay on her back: on her side. . . . She would call no sons of Heaven, she
would ask no sons of Wisdom. She created from her own bosom. She evolved water-men terrible
and bad. — 2:52

The Design was not behind these forms. They might be an expression of nature's superabundant
energy before things were quite ready.

It was the Moon (Omoroka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings.
. . . — 2:115

Stanza II (continued)

6. The Water-men terrible and bad she herself created. From the remains of others (from
the mineral, vegetable and animal remains) from the first, second, and third
(Rounds) she formed them. The Dhyani came and looked. . . . The Dhyani
from the bright Mother-Father, from the white (Solar-lunar) regions they came,
from the abodes of the Immortal-Mortals. — 2:55

These higher beings had a special interest in the human bodies which were to people earth.
Their destiny was bound up with them. When more is told of them later, the meaning of
the strange expression "immortal mortals" will be plain.

Stanza II (continued)

7. Displeased were they. Our flesh is not there (they said). This is no fit rupa
for our brothers of the fifth. No dwellings for the lives. Pure waters, not turbid, they
must drink. Let us dry them (the waters). — 2:57

So, as it is stated in the next Stanza, the Flames came and slew the forms which were two-faced
and four-faced. The Flames refer to a hierarchy of spirits, who with their workers on
lower planes are ever overseeing the development of the world they have in charge. Great
geological changes were brought about and immense periods of time passed. When finally
the work of destruction was ended, and Mother Earth was bare, in the poetical symbology
of the Ancients,

Stanza III

12. The great chohans (Lords), called the Lords of the Moon, of the airy bodies.
"Bring forth men, (they were told), men of your nature. Give them (i. e.,
the Jivas or Monads) their forms within. She (Mother Earth or Nature) will
build coverings without (external bodies). (For) males-females will
they be. Lords of the flame, also." — 2:75

And now we come to the pioneers spoken of above, who were the lords of the moon, being
the most advanced monads. If they gave the design, nature would be able to carry this
out and form suitable bodies. But she was utterly incapable of initiating the work. These
pioneers, through the aid of a long series of beings, one might also say of almost infinite
grades, had reached on the fourth globe of the fourth round, the human stage in large
astral forms. They attained this development of form that they might provide bodies for
the future men of this earth — for themselves, in fact. These lords, known also as
lunar pitris, were called to undertake the task of guiding the next step in the evolution
of human bodies. When therefore the order from their superiors comes, they

ooze out their astral doubles from the "ape-like" forms which they had evolved in Round
III. And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds
physical man. — 1:180; see also 2:115

And the agencies are not the blind forces modern science proclaims, but lives of varying
degrees and kinds of consciousness, which either make up, or help those who do make up,
the slowly evolving human form.

Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and a half Root-Races, up to the middle or
turning-point, it is the astral shadows of the "progenitors," the lunar Pitris, which
are the formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution
of the physical form toward perfection. — 2:110

Section 3

The last chapter stated our relations to the lunar pitris. More explicitly is this expressed
in The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, page 88, as follows:

The progenitors of Man, called in India "Fathers," Pitaras or Pitris, are the creators
of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities,
and we are they.

Having then created the bodies, these lunar ancestors, though godlike beings on their own
plane, possessing powers and knowledge of which we have little conception, remained at
their posts in the lower kingdoms until their younger brothers, the less advanced monads,
were ready to take their places, as gradually through the ages these last mounted to this
point in their cycles of growth. Compensation came later, as the lunar pitris then evolved
into the human stage.

For these "Lunar Spirits" have to become "Men" in order that their "Monads" may reach
a higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of the Manasa-Putras,
those who endow the "senseless" shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with "mind"
in the latter part of the Third Root-Race. — 1:180-1

It is said in this connection that at the end of our seventh earth-round, and after our
globes have imparted their energy to another system, as did the moon before us, then our
advanced egos will perform a similar service for those who will follow us. After which

The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the instructors
and guides of a mankind whose Monads may now yet be imprisoned — semi-conscious — in
the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles will be animating
perhaps, the highest specimens of the Vegetable world. — 1:267

And now from this point can be perceived two of the streams of evolution which run through
the human races: the spiritual, represented by the monads, and the physical, in the bodies
which gradually concrete about the astral forms created by our lunar ancestors. There
is a third, to be explained later, the intellectual, which stream enters first toward
the close of the third root-race, on the fourth globe of this, the fourth round, and which
fills up the gap between the other two, and brings them into union. Strictly speaking,
"man" cannot be said to exist until this happens. These three streams or systems of evolution
have each their own laws and are ruled or guided by different hierarchies of the highest
dhyanis.

We have now the first hint of the complexity of human nature. Also is foreshadowed the
masterly guidance and untiring protection under which man evolves.

Again, it must be explained and remembered that as the work of each Round is said to be
apportioned to a different group of so-called "Creators" or "Architects" so is that of
every globe; i.e., it is under the supervision and guidance of special "Builders"
and "Watchers" — the various Dhyan-Chohans. — 1:233

Nothing moves by chance, but only through the agency of those who in aeons of time have
become perfect each in his own way and place. Consciousness, intelligence, compassion,
fill every atom of space.

"FirstcometheSELF-EXISTENTonthisEarth. Theyarethe'SpiritualLives'projectedbytheabsoluteWILLandLAW, atthedawnofeveryrebirthoftheworlds. TheseLIVESarethedivine'Sishta,' (the seed-Manus, or the Prajapati
and the Pitris)."

From these proceed —

1. The First Race, the "Self-born," which are the (astral)
shadows of their progenitors. The body was devoid of all understanding (mind,
intelligence, and will). The inner being (the higher self or Monad), though
within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The link, the Manus, was not there
as yet. — 2:164

This first race appeared

on seven portions of the globe "each on his lot" — i.e., each a different
race of men externally and internally, and on different zones. — 2:77

. . . the first Root-Race appeared 300,000,000 years after vegetation had evolved.
— 2:290 footnote

These "shadows" were born "each of his own color and kind," each also "inferior to his
creator," because the latter was a complete being of his kind. — 2:96-7

Stanza IV

15. The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny
were Bhuta (phantoms) with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they were called
Chhaya (image or shadow) Race. — 2:90-1

Chhaya means astral image. We might infer by analogy that all the monads passed in turn
through all of these seven aspects of the first race, in order to gain the full experience.
This implies, as it is also stated, that there were seven subdivisions of this class of
pitris. They remained over from the Third Round, as has been stated, and are called the
self-existent.

There were many others who contributed their share in forming even this first race, after
the shadows or form-bodies were projected.

Each class of Creators endows man with what it has to give. — 2:95

Aeons of time and many grades of beings were called into service before the divine spark,
the intelligence of man could be quickened. Some of these changes are poetically outlined
in the Stanzas as follows:

Stanza IV (continued)

16. How are the (real) manushyas born? The manus with minds, how are they made?
The fathers (Barhishad (?) ) call to their help their own (theKavyavahana,
electric fire), which is the fire which burns in earth. The spirit of the earth
called to his help the solar fire (Suchi, the spirit in the Sun.) These
three (the Pitris and the two fires) produced in their joint efforts a good rupa.
It (the form) could stand, walk, run, recline and fly. Yet it was still but a
chhaya, a shadow with no sense. . . . — 2:102

H. P. Blavatsky comments that this failure

allegorizes the vanity of physical nature's unaided attempts to construct even
a perfect animal — let alone man. For the "Fathers," the lower Angels, are
all Nature-Spirits and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own;
but this is not enough to construct a thinking man. — 2:102

Stanza IV (continued)

17. The breath (humanMonad) needed a form; the Fathers gave it. The
breath needed a gross body; the Earth molded it. The breath needed the Spirit of Life;
the Solar Lhas breathed it into its form. The breath needed a mirror of its body (astral
shadow); "We gave it our own," said the Dhyanis. The breath needed a vehicle of desires
(Kama-Rupa); "It has it," said the Drainer of Waters (Suchi,
the fire of passion and animal instinct). The breath needs a mind to embrace
the Universe; "We cannot give that," said the Fathers. "I never had it," said the Spirit
of the Earth. "The form would be consumed were I to give it mine," said the Great (solar)
Fire. . . . (nascent) Man remained an empty, senseless Bhuta. . .
. Thus have the boneless given life to those who became (later) men with bones
in the third (race). — 2:104-5

In regard to the lunar pitris or "ancestors," the advanced monads,

Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, esoterically,
that it is they who became the first Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution.
— 2:94-5

The lhas of the moon (progenitors) were only ancestors of the form, but the four orders
of dhyan-chohans out of the seven classes were the progenitors of the concealed man.
Even at this time man was becoming complex, that is, built up of many lives, simple as
he was in comparison with mankind of today. However, so early as the second race, the
latent minds of future men began to be awakened, though it was not until the third race
that the great change from animals to men took place. Says the Commentary:

"The Sons ofmahat are the quickeners of the
human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark
that vivifies the human animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life eternal.". . .
. "In the beginning (in the Second Race) some (of the Lords) only breathed
of their essence into Manushya (men) and some took in man their abode."
— 2:103

These creators are of a different order. None prior to this had been able to give mind,
for they had it not to give. Now a certain class begin to awaken the sleeping germ of
mind in those who were developed to the point of making it possible. H. P. Blavatsky says
in this connection, that had not the sons of mahat given this impulse —

The cyclic pilgrimage would have to be performed through all the planes of existence half
unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. — 2:103

The fact that only some became incarnations of the sons of mahat, while others could be
quickened only by a spark, accounts for the great difference in the intellectual capacities
of men.

The First root-race did not die, but

disappeared in the second race, as certain lower lives and plants do in their
progeny. — 2:84

There was as yet no physical body, and the transformation took place by a process of budding.

How could these Chhayas reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race,
since they were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire,
or Kama-rupa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved in the Second Race unconsciously,
as do some plants. — 2:116

A study of the development of a germ-cell as it takes place now will give some hint of
the manner of this early process of reproduction.

this Race never died. Its "men" melted gradually away, becoming absorbed in the
bodies of their own "sweat-born" progeny, more solid than their own. The old form vanished
and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new form, more human and physical. — 2:121

Not only did the first race not die, but neither fire nor water could destroy it. The second
race, however, was more solid, and not only could be, but actually was, destroyed by water.

The ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent (Greenland, among others) were transformed,
in order, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperboreal Hades. This transformation
was due to the displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans changing their
beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution
and consolidation of the globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there
have already been four. And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.
— 2:138

"The early Second (Root) Race were the Fathers of the
'Sweat-born'; the later Second (Root) Race were the
'Sweat-born' themselves." — 2:117

This refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a race to its close, which covers
aeons of time. Every root-race has seven stages of evolution racially, as has every individual
of the race. Thus the first subraces of the second race were born at first, by the process
described; while the last began gradually to be formed otherwise.

We speak of these beings as men, but as a matter of fact

the first and second races, were not physical beings, but merely rudiments of
the future men. — 2:108

They passed without having made any history. The second creates the third and perishes.
The human embryo at this time was egg-born, and then nourished by cosmic forces, quite
independent of its androgynous parent.

Stanza VI

22. The Sun warmed it; the Moon cooled and shaped it; the Wind fed it until its ripeness.
— 2:131

This was the beginning of the third race — the most complicated in its development,
and the most wonderful, as having been the one in which the great change took place; and
the one which marks an almost unbelievable difference between its first and last condition.
Before describing this race more in detail, however, it will be necessary in the next
chapter to say something of the teaching as to the powers which are behind all changes
that take place — changes which mean the unfolding of that which is within, and which
are called evolution. Yet it must never be forgotten in studying this philosophy that
the background of the whole teaching is that after having reached the human plane, man
creates himself.

There are teachers, helpers, at every stage, but man has the free will to follow these
instructors or not. He is tethered to his higher self, the god within, by a thread so
long and elastic that he may wander to every last corner of the globe, or realm of consciousness;
that he may even become insensible of it, yet the golden thread is always there to lead
him out of the labyrinth of ignorance and doubt. He may follow it home, or alas! he may
break it and undo the work of many eternities. Nature in the beginning assumes the responsibility,
but this she resigns when mind has been awakened. From that moment the consequences of
every deed fall upon the actor. And although he may weave a net about himself and call
it destiny, he has always a choice in dealing with the self-made tangle — one which
may draw the threads yet tighter, or gradually unravel them. Without such freedom, man
could never fullfill his divine potential.

Section 4

Every system of philosophy worthy of the name, premises eternity in both directions, and
the wisdom-religion declares that this is true. A beginning in life is inconceivable.
Forever beings have been evolving, and the universe is necessarily filled with those of
every possible degree of intelligence and non-intelligence and of every grade of power.
"Blind force" and "empty space" represent conceptions only of the ignorant. They can have
no basis in reality. Moreover, the universe — not our solar system alone — being
one, every part of it is related to the whole. The statement of such self-evident facts
would almost call for an apology, were there not abundant indication that religious bias
has caused the average human mind, in building up its thought-structure, absolutely to
neglect them.

But once these fundamental truths are realized, there is no escaping the conclusion that
every atom has its place and function; that not the smallest tittle is superfluous; that
all space is inhabited by intelligences of varying degrees, each performing its task as
accurately as do the innumerable entities which make up our body; that for the infinite
worlds to move with the certainty and precision which they plainly do, there can be no
gap in nature anywhere, no point which is not supported above and below, no smallest cosmic
effect without an actor intelligent to the degree of the act, no being which is not essential
to the whole; in short, that the universe of universes is but the instrument, the organ,
the body — if you wish — of the great Unknown.

From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rush-light,
from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being — the world of Form and
Existence is an immense chain, whose links are all connected. — The Secret Doctrine,
1:604

We cannot study ourselves without reaching out to the whole; we cannot study the whole
without seeing the reflection — ourselves. In speaking of the hierarchies of dhyan-chohans,
H. P. Blavatsky says that

humanity, as a whole, is in reality a materialized though as yet imperfect expression
thereof. — 1:93

The Worlds are all subject to Rulers or Regents. — 1:99

It is impossible in papers of this kind to give more than a hint of those overruling souls
whose constant care and continuous exercise of will furnish us with the necessary conditions
for life. Even The Secret Doctrine claims merely to outline what knowledge our
humanity needs for the coming centuries. These articles are an attempt to interest in
Blavatsky's great work those who are searching for truth, and to implant the idea which
she has given to the world that there are such unceasingly active guides. She says there
are innumerable hierarchies of builders, architects of our planetary chain, and progenitors
of our humanity,

until the mind is lost in this endless enumeration of celestial hosts and Beings, each
having its distinct task in the running of the visible Kosmos during its existence. —
1:129

Each people and nation, as said already, has its direct Watcher, Guardian and
Father in Heaven — a Planetary Spirit. — 1:576

There are thus watchers or architects who furnished the many and various races with divine
kings and leaders.

When incarnated as Kings of the "divine Dynasties," they gave the impulse to civilizations,
and directed the mind with which they had endued men to the invention and perfection of
all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors
of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To them — the Kabiri
or Titans — is ascribed the invention of letters, . . . of laws and legislature;
of architecture. . . . and of the medical use of plants. . . .

It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed, by producing corn or
wheat, the great boon of agriculture. What Isis-Osiris, the once living
Kabiria, has done in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong
to one class. — 2:364; see also 1:266-7

During the great mystery and drama of life known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is like
the object placed behind the white screen upon which are thrown the Chinese shadows, called
forth by the magic lantern. The actual figures and things remain invisible, while the
wires of evolution are pulled by the unseen hands; and men and things are thus but the
reflections, on the white field, of realities, behind the snares of Mahamaya,
or the great Illusion. — 1:278

The old records of every race and nation show a belief in divine rulers. It can be found
in the Chinese, Persian, Indian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Peruvian.

These Beings appear first as "gods" and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally
emerge as "divine-Kings and Rulers." But this fact has been gradually forgotten. — 2:366

This will be more fully explained in describing the third race. All through The Secret
Doctrine are references to and explanations of the myths and legends which have formed
the background of every ancient people; which have entered into every religion and been
the inspiration of artists and poets of all ages. They are all the more or less true reproductions
of the actual facts in the ancient history of man. The Secret Doctrine is a treasure-mine
for those wishing to trace these universal myths to their origin; as for those wishing
to study comparative religions; as indeed, for those who seek illumination on any subject
that is of real interest to the human race.

In Volume 1, pages 207-8, is described a Wondrous Being,
who

is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically
known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc.,
have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane — the
ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially
among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form,
yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated
Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the "Nameless One" who has so many
names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the "Initiator,"
called the "Great Sacrifice." For, sitting at the threshold
of Light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness,
which he Will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle.
Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the fountain
of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does
not know — aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its heaven? Because the lonely, sore-footed
pilgrims on their way back to their home are never sure to the last moment of
not losing their way in this limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life.
Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he
is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself
from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for
the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit by the
Great Sacrifice.

It is under the direct, silent guidance of this Maha —
(great) — Guru that all the other less divine Teachers
and instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening of human consciousness, the
guides of early Humanity. It is through these "Sons of God" that infant humanity got its
first notions of all the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge; and it
is they who have laid the first foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations that puzzle
so sorely our modern generation of students and scholars.

And it is they who have given to the world the great wisdom-religion, the modern expression
of which is theosophy.

The foregoing quotations will prepare the mind for the great event of the third race, whose
history is so wonderful. There were gradually evolved during that race three distinct
methods of procreation: the first was sexless; the second, hermaphrodite; the third, bisexual.
In the beginning, the process was one unknown to modern science. It was by means of an
exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which, coalescing, formed an oviform
ball or egg, which gradually hardened, broke, and the young human animal issued from it
unaided.

The little ones of the earlier races were entirely sexless — shapeless even for all
one knows; but those of the later races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race
that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity became
distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing eggs began to give
birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to
Beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and
women. — 2:132

Speaking of the method of reproduction of the early third race from these drops of "sweat,"
it

is not more difficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the foetus from an imperceptible
germ, which foetus develops into a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. — 2:177

Of course the changes were numerous, as the transformation from one to the other of the
three main types was gradual and covered millions of years. A little later the drops became
greater and developed into huge eggs, in which the human foetus gestated for several years.

During the hermaphrodite period there was a stage when human creatures were four-armed,
with one head and three eyes, the third eye being the organ of spiritual vision.

A Kalpa later (after the separation of
the sexes) men having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became dim; and coordinately
the third eye commenced to lose its power. . . . The third eye, likewise, getting
gradually petrified, soon disappeared. — 2:294

Blavatsky says its present witness is the pineal gland.

In the beginning, every class and family of living species was hermaphrodite and objectively
one-eyed. . . . The two physical front eyes developed later on in both brute
and man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement of the Third Race, in
the same position as that of some of the blind vertebrate, in our day, i.e., beneath an
opaque skin. Only the stages of the odd or primeval eye, in man and brute, are
now inverted, as the former has already passed that animal non-rational
stage in the Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a whole plane of consciousness.
Therefore, while the "Cyclopean" eye was, and still is, in man the organ of
spiritual sight, in the animal it was that of objective vision. And this eye,
having performed its function, was replaced, in the course of physical evolution from
the simple to the complex, by two eyes, and thus was stored and laid aside by nature for
further use in Aeons to come. — 2:299

Those who are interested can follow in Blavatsky's writings the presumptive evidence of
these changes in the ancient legends and records. Fairy tales of one-eyed giants are born
of old memories.

The active Power, the "Perpetual motion of the great Breath" only awakens Kosmos at the
dawn of every new Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary Forces,
and thus causing it to become objective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that
dual motion transfers Kosmos from the plane of the Eternal Ideal into that of finite manifestation,
or from the Noumenal to the phenomenal plane. Everything that is,
was, and will be, eternally is, even the
countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their
ideal Form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity, and, when they pass away,
will exist as reflections. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone
has ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced
"becoming," i.e., objectivizing into its present materiality, or expanding from
within outwards, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its
grossest appearance. Therefore our human forms have existed in the Eternity as
astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which models, the Spiritual Beings (or Gods)
whose duty it was to bring them into objective being and terrestrial Life, evolved the
protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from their own essence. After which when
this human Upadhi, or basic mold was ready, the natural terrestrial Forces began
to work on those supersensuous molds which contained, besides their own,
the elements of all the past vegetable and future animal forms of this globe in them.
Therefore, man's outward shell passed through every vegetable and animal body
before it assumed the human shape. — 1:282-3

"As soon as man appeared, everything was complete . . . for everything is comprised
in man. He unites in himself all forms." — 2:290

What happened when this outward instrument was ready will be described in the next chapter.

Section 5

The vehicle was now ready. That momentous event, upon which all the energies of this planet
had been focused during the millions and millions of years it had then existed, was near.
That which was to become man had lived in every form which the infinite combinations of
this world's elements could shape; had learned to mold and remold them; had functioned
through each until perfection and impossibility of fault was reached and had then passed
on to more complex forms.

During all these eternities this, the monad, had been overshadowed by the hosts of heaven,
by denizens of greater worlds and of interstellar spaces. Through their guidance myriads
of lesser lives had at the cyclic moment taken up their abode in the growing complex form
which was to become the human temple. New faculties sprang into being as it silently moved
toward its destiny. But of the exhaustless storehouse of nature was brought to this marvelous
form the living replica of all her riches, furnishing it with the means to unlock every
door of her secret chambers. Patience, love, wisdom, had done their utmost. In such ways
were built up these bodies which we too often desecrate; whose exquisite mechanism we
disturb for a passing pleasant sensation; whose harmony and grace we carelessly destroy.
But at the period of which we speak there were no discords. The lives presiding over the
various organs knew well their little kingdoms (as they do now), and unnecessary disturbers
of the peace were absent. The Wise Men of the East, also, from the spiritual sun brought
their gifts to the temple being prepared for the inner Christos.

For dwelling within the living form was its spiritual monad. Nothing was lacking but mind.
The earlier creators had given what they had, the external form was by them built up,
the barhishad pitris had given physical creative fire; but mind or spiritual fire was
not theirs to offer. Thus the lower and the higher consciousness in this frame were separate.
One knew not the other: they were too different in nature. The lower animal was active,
the higher part was latent and must continue so to be unless the gulf were spanned. (See
The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, pages 57, 79, 94-5, 241-3.)

Then the gods descended — the solar gods, the radiant manasaputras — and took
up their abode in those dwellings which were at last ready. They incarnated in those mindless
forms and quickened their latent fires. This great change for human kind happened over
eighteen million years ago. (See Volume 2, pages 46, 149, 157, 250, 255.)

The story is told in allegory in the myth of Prometheus, who brought the spiritual fire
from heaven to mortals and was chained to a rock for ages — the rock of matter, which
was the animal body. The lacking principle was mind or manas, which must have lain sleeping
as a germ forever had not Prometheus lighted and awakened it with spiritual fire. To quicken
it permanently, to make a mortal immortal, to change a dawning intelligence into a god
— for this, a long manvantara is needed. If at any time in the long-ago past the
fire-bringer had quitted his post, or during the eternities yet to be of this earth-cycle,
he should do so, the fire would die out, and the form return to idiocy. Up to this mysterious
and momentous event, the lunar pitris were the formative powers in the races of men, but
from this time onward, the higher ego should be the ruling power — although
too often, alas! it is dragged down by the fierce and dominating lower nature.

Between man and the animal — whose Monads (or Jivas) are fundamentally identical
— there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self-consciousness. What is human
mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it is not a portion of the essence — and,
in some rare cases of incarnation, the veryessence — of a higher
Being: one from a higher and divine plane? Can man — a god in the animal form — be
the product of Material Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs
from man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and
is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad — seeing that the intellectual
potentialities of the two differ as the Sun does from the Glow-worm? And what is it that
creates such difference, unless man is an animal plus a livinggod within
his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves seriously the question. — 2:81

Stanza VII, Volume 2, page 161, referring to this part of the history, reads as follows:

24. The Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night . . . ready for re-birth, came down.
They saw the (intellectually) vile forms of the first third (still senseless
Race.). "We can choose," said the Lords, "we have wisdom." Some entered the Chhayas.
Some projected a spark. Some deferred till the Fourth (Race). From their own
essence they filled (intensified) the Kama (the vehicle of desire).
Those who received but a spark remained destitute of (higher) knowledge. The
spark burnt low. The Third remained mindless. Their Jivas (Monads) were not ready.
These were set apart among the Seven (primitivehuman species). They
(became the) narrow-headed.[*] The third were ready. In these shall we dwell,
said the Lords of the Flame and of the Dark Wisdom.______*The term here means
neither the dolicho-cephalic nor the brachyo-cephalic, nor yet skulls of a smaller volume,
but simply brains devoid of intellect generally. — 2:168n

H. P. Blavatsky, in commenting on the above, says this Stanza contains the whole key to
the mysteries of evil. It explains the puzzling inequalities in human life, and many problems
which have baffled the great minds of our races. Intellect may be said to have been born
at this time, and during this fourth round it developed as a fit vehicle for the higher
faculty, buddhi or intuition. But manas or mind will not be fully developed until
the next or fifth round, and will have the opportunity of becoming entirely divine
at the end of the seventh round.

Those who were "not ready" does not imply any fault on their part, nor any partiality on
the part of those above them. All are given what they can take, just as is the case all
through this long pilgrimage, and as conscious life grows, each is given what he has earned.
Nature is never partial. Those "not ready" represent simply a later arrival on the scene
and, it is said, will have to evolve through this and the other three globes of this round
before they will arrive at the level of the average class. But nature is full of compensations.
Blavatsky gives here this hint:

The monads of the lowest specimens of humanity . . .
had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favored brethren
in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened
with past, present and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more fortunate
than the greatest genius of civilized countries. — 2:168

Even so, it is important to bear in mind H. P. Blavatsky's further comment that

If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to re-emerge instead;
and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the earth, it is
they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized
nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might
have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would
fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity
into superior and inferior races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.
— 2:425

Our average present humanity are those who received "but a spark." It is our destiny to
acquire intellectuality in its fulness during the present manvantara or life-period of
this earth. When the life-forces of this planet reimbody on the next, as did those of
the moon on earth, we shall be ready for the full reception of the "sons of wisdom."

This era is the point so often referred to in ancient philosophy where the two streams
of evolution meet, coming in opposite directions.

There was a spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest
to the lowest, as well as a physical development — from the simple and homogeneous,
up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us
by the modern evolutionists. This double evolution in two contrary directions, required
various ages, of divers natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate
the being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and never erring
law, which proceeds on the same lines from one eternity (or Manvantara) to the other ever
furnishing an ascending scale for the manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion
(Maha-Maya), but plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality
on the one hand, and then redeeming it through flesh and liberating it — this
law, we say, uses for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or
Minds (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies. — 2:87-8

This is typical of the process of all evolution. Something higher meets something lower
for their mutual benefit. But here this occurred on a huge scale. Physical nature had
been struggling for long eternities to reach the level where it could receive and be united
with the other pole of the One Life — spirit. It was a point at which the whole face
of life on this globe changed radically. From a dull vegetative existence, all was transformed
in a manner and with a rapidity unbelievable — relative however, as to rapidity.
It must not be forgotten that the period of even a subrace is, roughly speaking, 210,000
years. But the change ran all the way from beings with no language to some of the highest
civilizations the earth has yet known.

The wonderful quickening of life was due to those who fully incarnated and became "Arhats."

There is an eternal cyclic law of re-births, and the series is headed at every new Manvantaric
dawn by those who had enjoyed their rest from re-incarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable
Aeons — by the highest and the earliest Nirvanis. It was the turn
of those "Gods" to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth,
. . . . — 2:232

Also we have a suggestive passage from the letter of a great teacher, bearing on this subject:

Says the letter: "Now there are, and there must be, failures in the ethereal races of
the many classes of Dhyan-Chohans, or Devas (progressed entities of a previous
planetary period), as well as among men. But still, as the failures are too far
progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan-Chohanship into the
vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower Kingdoms, this then happens. Where
a new solar system has to be evolved these Dhyan-Chohans are borne in by influx 'ahead'
of the Elementals (Entities . . . to be developed into humanity at a future
time) and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force, in the aura of a nascent world
. . . until the stage of human evolution is reached. . . . Then they become
an active force and commingle with the Elementals, to develop little by little
the full type of humanity." That is to say, to develop in, and endow man with his
Self-conscious mind, or Manas. — 2:233n

Others from the great past had come to form the outer and inner man. Now that the seven
principles which are needed to complete a human being were united, these great ones came
to teach men how to live.

Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub-races of the Third human race,
by those who found themselves endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of
higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man,
as the lower Pitar-Devatas (the Pitris) were the progenitors
of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith,
were described as, "towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries
of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth." . . . the chief gods and heroes of
the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these
men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called
Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. — 2:171-2

This race created, not as those who had received a "spark," but by the power of will, known
as kriyasakti, that mysterious power latent in the will of every person, but not to be
developed in ordinary humanity for ages yet to come.

The Third Race had thus created the so-called Sons of Will and
Yoga, or the "ancestors" (the spiritual forefathers) of all the subsequent
and present Arhats, or Mahatmas, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed
created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who
were generated sexually after the separation of the sexes, the Fall of Man. For
creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter, the calling forth out
of it the primordial divine Light and eternal Life. They were the "holy seed-grain" of
the future Saviors of Humanity. — 2:173

They were a conscious production, as a portion of the race was already animated with the
divine spark of spiritual, superior intelligence. It was not a Race, this progeny. It
was at first a wondrous Being, called the "Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine
and semi-human beings. "Set apart" in Archaic genesis for certain purposes,
they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, "Munis and Rishis
from previous Manvantaras" — to form the nursery for future human adepts,
on this earth and during the present cycle. These "Sons of Will and Yoga" born, so to
speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is explained, entirely apart from the rest of
mankind. — 1:207

It is called the "undying race" esoterically, for

Happily for the human race the "Elect Race" had already become the vehicle of incarnation
of the (intellectually and spiritually) highest Dhyanis before Humanity had become quite
material. When the last sub-races — save some lowest — of the Third Race had
perished with the great Lemurian Continent, "the seeds of the Trinity of Wisdom"
had already acquired the secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same
great personality to step ad libitum from one worn-out body into another. — 2:276

They will once more produce "mind-born" immaculate sons in the seventh root-race.

Section 6

In Isis Unveiled, H. P. Blavatsky gives a legend of a Sacred Island — also
quoted in The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, page 220. This island rested in a vast
inland sea, which extended over Middle Asia north of the proud Himalayan range, where
now are desolate barren wastes. The ancient isle had no rival in the world for beauty.
Some thousands of years B.C., this lovely spot was the home of the Sons of Wisdom — the
undying race — who had escaped from the great deluge. In the legend it is known as
the Garden of Eden, of which, it is said, all subsequent Edens are but the reminiscence.
There is a tradition that this island exists to the present day as an oasis, surrounded
by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi desert, whose sands "no foot hath crossed
in the memory of man." There dwelt the Sons of Wisdom.

As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Kadmos, these are all generic names, branches
and offshoots of the seven primordial sages (incarnated Dhyan-Chohans or Devas, in
illusive, not mortal bodies), who taught Humanity all it knew, and whose earliest
disciples assumed their master's names. This custom passed from the Fourth to the Fifth
Race. Hence the sameness of the traditions about Hermes . . . Enoch, etc., they
are all inventors of letters; none of them dies but still lives, and they are the first
Initiators into, and Founders of the Mysteries. — The Secret Doctrine 2:267n

Alone a handful of primitive men . . . remained the elect custodians of the
Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers. . . . these Elect were
the germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period: . . . .
Though unseen they are ever present. When people say of one of them,
"He is dead"; behold, he is alive and under another form.
These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the Seed of
undying knowledge. . . . Thou shalt never speak, O Lanoo, of thesegreat ones . . . before a multitude, mentioning them by
their names. The Wise alone will understand. . . . — 2:281-2

The gradual evolution of man in the Secret Doctrine shows that all the later . . .
Races have their physical origin in the early Fourth Race. But it is the sub-race,
which preceded the one that separated sexually, that is to be regarded as the spiritual
ancestors of our present generations, and especially of the Eastern Aryan Races.[*] — 2:165n
_____[* The word Aryan is derived from the Sanskrit root arya, "noble,"
and for centuries denoted the ancient Indo-European peoples who migrated into Northern
India, Aryavarta. In H. P. Blavatsky's writings it generally refers to the 5th
root-race, i.e., present-day humanity.]

The Garden of Eden, then, as a locality, is no myth at all, but as said, there have been
several Edens.

it is really from the Euxine to Kashmir and beyond, that science has to search for the
cradle — or rather one of the chief cradles — of mankind and the sons of Ad-ah;
and especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed-en on the Euphrates became the college
of the astronomers and magi, the Aleim.

But this "college" and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a faint reminiscence
of the Adi-varsha, of the primeval Third Race. — 2:203

In the long transition period when the methods of reproduction were changing, the animals
separated into two sexes first. By degrees this transformation occurred in the human stage.
But the mindless men, those who had received no "spark," the "narrow-headed"
spoken of in Chapter V, crossed with the animals — a possible thing in the very early
steps of evolution. Stanza VIII, verse 32, of The Book of Dzyan, quoted in
The Secret Doctrine, 2:184, reads:

And those which had no spark (the "narrow-brained") took huge she-animals
unto them. They begat upon them dumb races. Dumb they were (the "narrow brained")
themselves. But their tongues untied. The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters
they bred. A race of crooked, red-hair-covered monsters, going on all fours. A dumb race,
to keep the shame untold.

This progeny, which cannot be compared to anything existing today, are the ancestors of
the anthropoids, so puzzling to science. We are now at a place in the history where it
is possible to understand the allusions made several times to exceptions to the rule that
no monads enter the human stage after the middle point on this globe, namely, during the
fourth race. For this dumb race was partly human. The event was the first physical "fall
into matter" of the lower races which, however, being mindless, were irresponsible. The
results of the mistake — for such it was — had to fall on the Sons of Wisdom,
who had refused to incarnate earlier, and yet were responsible for the coming humanity.
Stanza IX reads as follows:

33. Seeing which (the sin committed with the animals), the Lhas (the Spirits,
the "Sons of Wisdom") who had not built men (who had refused to
create), wept, saying: —34. "The Amanasa (the 'mindless') have
defiled our future abodes. This is Karma. Let us dwell in the others. Let us teach them
better, lest worse should happen." They did. . . .35. Then all became endowed
with Manas (minds). They saw the sin of the mindless. — 2:191

By degrees the men themselves as time unfolded their natures

realized the unfitness — we must not say sin — of what they had done, only when
too late; after the angelic monads from higher spheres had incarnated in, and endowed
them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply physical, like the animals
generated from them. For what is the distinction? The doctrine teaches that the only difference
between animate and inanimate objects on earth, between an animal and a human frame, is
that in some the various "fires" are latent and in others they are active. The vital
fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them. But no animal has the
three higher principles awakened in him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus
non-existing. And so would the animal frames of men be to this day,
had they been left as they came out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose shadows
they were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in matter. — 2:267

H. P. Blavatsky comments on the Stanzas to the effect that, though sinning unconsciously,
this seventh degenerate race will have to bide its time for final development, but will
find itself on the last day, on one of the seven paths.

But the journey is fraught with difficulties for those Sons of Wisdom who thus deferred
incarnation.

— these had their Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies (physiologically)
inferior to their astral models, because their chhayas had belonged to progenitors
of an inferior degree in the seven classes. As to those "Sons of Wisdom" who had "deferred"
their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with
sin and impurity, they produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on
them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that
seed of iniquity for aeons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had become defiled
through their own procrastination. — 2:228

This mistake, then, was the origin of the much discussed race of anthropoid apes, and the
history of the event shows a fallacy of the so-called Darwinian doctrine. Blavatsky points
out that

the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other mammal, but contains
in itself the totality of the kingdoms of nature, — 2:259

though —

It is not denied that in the preceding Round man was a gigantic ape-like creature;
and when we say "man" we ought perhaps to say, the rough-mold that was developing for
the use of man in this Round only. — 2:261

What we now see as apes are the much-changed descendants of that early animal-human progeny.
They form the exception so often spoken of, and will become men of a lower order in the
next or fifth round.

It is interesting to note here that science is beginning to corroborate to a degree the
ancient teachings on this subject. The puzzle and mystery of the simian races can, of
course, never be unraveled by the methods of investigation at present used by scientists.
Only a study of the archaic records can reveal the real facts. But the careful, patient,
persevering, and truly remarkable researches of scholars working in this direction, are
gradually undermining the Darwinian theory. In high scientific quarters it is asserted
that there is no evidence of its truth, but that inference can reach no further than to
suspect man and ape as representing separate branches of the same original stock. Evidence
has been produced to prove man anterior to the ape — all of which opens the door
for the acceptance of this ancient teaching, so simple and comprehensive. Dr. G. de Purucker's
book, Man in Evolution, presents facts from the anatomical and biological standpoint
which contradict the old Darwinian theory.

The mistakes of those early days did not end with the mindless race. The third race merged
into the fourth, growing more and more material; during which transition certain groups
showed their loss of spirituality by becoming sensual and inflated with pride.

. . . it is most important to remember that the Egos of the apes are
entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from
the bestiality of the latest Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are
entities who had already reached the "human stage" before this Round. Consequently, they
form an exception to the general rule. The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables,
but represent an extinct race of animal men. — 2:262

Nor did it yet end here.

As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical the
descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed,
dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the
later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the "Mindless" — this time with full responsibility.
The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid. — 2:689

In different parts of her work, Blavatsky has recorded very fully the ancestry of the apes
from different points of view. She has cited facts which would be of interest to the anthropologist,
the zoologist, the embryologist, or the student of folklore. Even many allusions in the
Bible are cleared up in this discussion. But it is enough for us here to outline the story
as to their origin.

The separation of the sexes took place very gradually, and slowly many other changes took
place. There had been eternal spring in the sinless, mindless days of the race. But gradually,
as season succeeded season, great cold in places forced men to seek methods of protection
— clothing, shelter, etc., and after the formation of the men-animals, the natures
of animals changed. They became ferocious. The old, happy, golden days passed. Adi-varsha,
the Eden of the first races, became a frozen white corpse.

Misery and suffering drove men to appeal to the superior fathers. Then

Divine Kings descended and taught men sciences and arts. — 2:201

They formed the first Divine Dynasty, and in the course of time a glorious civilization
arose.

There have been several Divine Dynasties — a series for every Root Race beginning
with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. — 2:429

In the words of a Master:

"The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even
Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the Third
Race" — after its separation. — 2:429-30

Their home, now called Lemuria, was on a gigantic continent, now buried beneath the Pacific
Ocean. It stretched east as far as the two Americas, and west to the Indian Ocean and
Africa. Australia was a portion of it, and the numerous islands dotted over the great
ocean are the mountaintops of that ancient land. Under the guidance of their divine rulers,
they built large cities; cultivated arts and sciences; knew astronomy, architecture, and
mathematics.

But this, of course, came about gradually. Between the final physical evolution and the
first city built, many hundred thousands of years passed. In the sixth subrace, the first
rock-cities were built of stone and lava. One of these, entirely of lava, was built about
thirty miles west of Easter Island.

The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the
last sub-race; and an occultist shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the stone
relics found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are "very
much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia-Huanaco in Peru,"
and that they are in the Cyclopean Style. The first large
cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is now known as the island
of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in those days as there are now.
Evolution achieved its work of perfection with the former, and Karma — its work of
destruction on the latter. — 2:317-8

Modern archaeologists, in trying to discover how the enormous stones of these Cyclopean
relics were transported, do not take into account the fact that the builders were giants.

It must be understood that although every race had its special continent, there has never
been a dividing line between each race and its successor. One blends into the other, their
civilizations mingle over millions of years. Also, as might be inferred from all that
has been quoted, there were striking contrasts in development. While some awakened to
great knowledge, others were savages, hardly learning to build a fire. Again, a portion
were leading the nomadic life. Referring to Lemuria:

It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the Ancestors of
those, who are termed by us the most ancient peoples of the world now called respectively
the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees
and Phoenicians on the other. These were governed by the Divine
Dynasties, i.e., kings and rulers who had of mortal man only his physical
appearance as it was then, but who were Beings from spheres higher and more celestial
than our own sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. — 2:328

But —

even before the real advent of the Fourth or Atlantean race, the majority of mankind had
fallen into iniquity and sin, save the hierarchy of the "Elect," the followers and disciples
of the "Sons of Will and Yoga" — called later the "Sons of the Fire-Mist." — 2:319

The hour had struck for the beginning of the destruction of the third race, and the entry
of the fourth, whose formation commenced from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian third-race
men, on the Atlantic portion of Lemuria, toward a point of land which is now, roughly
speaking, in the mid-Atlantic.

Their continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were
up-heaved in the ordinary course of time and became ultimately the truehome
of the great Race known as the Atlanteans. — 2:334

Section 7

Just as on the first continent at the North Pole, the pitris formed the first race on seven
zones, so was the fourth formed in similar manner. According to Stanza X (2:227):

38. Thus two by two, on the seven zones, the Third (Race) gave birth to the Fourth
(Race men). The gods became no-gods (Sura became a-Sura).
39. The First (Race) on every zone was moon-colored (yellow-white);
the Second, yellow, like gold; the Third, red; the Fourth, brown, which became black with
sin. The first seven (human) shoots were all of one complexion in the beginning.
The next (seven, the sub-races) began mixing their colors.

These divisions were necessary to suit the karma of the various reincarnating monads, which
were not all of equal purity in their last births in other worlds. All had a common origin,
inasmuch as all the "Creators" were divine beings, though of different classes or degrees
of perfection in their hierarchy.

The first change began in the region now known as Behring Straits and what there was of
dry land in central Asia. In those days even the Arctic regions were semi-tropical. It
was when the third had reached only the middle point of its development that the Commentary
says:

"The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of
that portion of theSweat Born; people knew snow,
ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that
did not perishremained as half-grown babes in size and
intellect. This was the third pralaya of the races. — 2:329

The teaching is that after every great period of activity or manvantara, there follows
a period of rest or pralaya, brought about or preceded by what are commonly called terrible
catastrophes. But these, being under the law which acts in harmony with karma — the
great adjuster — cannot, in the larger view, be regarded as misfortunes. They are
cleansing processes. They purify, and permit a fresh start, as does death for the individual.
The great races had their hour of glory, and at the appointed time they passed. The continents
which they inhabit perish alternately by fire and by water. Lemuria was consumed by fires
of subterranean origin — volcanic eruptions. Easter Island, with its craters of lava,
is a belated witness of this. The Atlantean continent was swallowed up by floods; and
the lands of the Aryan or fifth race will pass at their cyclic hour, ages hence.

since Vaivasvata Manu's Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four
such axial disturbances; when the old continents — save the first one — were
sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there
had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time; the
survival of the fittest nations and races was secured through timely help; and the
unfit ones — the failures — were disposed of by being swept off the earth. Such
sorting and shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but
requires several thousands of years before the new house is, set in order. — 2:330

The great numbers who always escape, led by their karma to safe places, form the seed for
the new race, and there must always be a long period of transition before the new type
becomes established. We see a similar thing on a smaller scale taking place now on the
American continent, where a new subrace is being formed from a mingling of the older races.

the Americans have become in only three centuries a "primary race," pro tem.,
before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races.
They are, in short, the germs of the Sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred
years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to
the present European or fifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in
about 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; until,
in consequence of cataclysms — the first series of those which must one day destroy
Europe, and still later the whole Aryan race (and thus affect both Americas), as also
most of the lands directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles — the
Sixth Root-Race will have appeared on the stage of our Round. — 2:444-5

Some portions for karmic reasons remain distinct for ages, as the egos forming them have
not yet completed their necessary experience in the old forms. The races overlap by hundreds
of thousands of years. We have on the earth today descendants of the third, now much changed
in stature and intellectual capacity and rapidly dying out; while the majority of mankind
now belongs to the seventh subrace of the fourth root-race.

Stanza XI of the Book of Dzyan reads:

44. They (the Atlanteans) built great images, nine yatis high (27 feet)
the size of their bodies. Inner fires had destroyed the land of their fathers (the
Lemurians). Water threatened the Fourth (Race). — 2:331

The Easter Island relics are eloquent memorials of the primeval giants, and many of them
are about 30 feet high. They have the distinctly sensual type of some of the Atlanteans.
Quite different are the Bamian statues in central Asia, whose physiognomy portrays the
"Sons of Gods," while the former are the brood of mighty sorcerers (see 2:224). Among
the Bamian statues are five built by the fourth race, who sought refuge in this region
to escape the general destruction. Here they recorded in stone what they knew would otherwise
be lost to memory — the early types. The first statue represents the first race and
is 173 feet in height.

The second — 120 feet high — represents the sweat-born; and the third — measuring
60 feet — immortalizes the race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first
physical race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented
in the Statues found on Easter Isle; but they were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature
at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic
fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present
Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter. — 2:340

In the third race, during its early stage of purity after the awakening of the human mind
by the Sons of Wisdom, and while the third eye was yet active, men had a consciousness
of their oneness with the Great Spirit of the universe. They had no religion as we understand
it, for they were the embodiment of religion itself. They were at one with all that lived
and breathed. Love, reverence, trust, confidence, and joy, radiated from them naturally.

It was the "Golden Age" in those days of old, the age when the "gods walked the earth,
and mixed freely with mortals." Since then, the gods departed (i.e., became invisible),
and later generations ended by worshiping their kingdoms the Elements. — 2:273

But as men grew and felt their power, as they tasted of the Tree of Wisdom, other feelings
began to stir. The lower man, the animal, began to awaken also and claim a hearing. These
forces were not equally balanced in all. By degrees some obtained mastery over their instincts
and joined the Sons of Light; others fell victims to them and became the slaves of matter.
Then different masters came to claim them.

We have always to remember that life on this or any globe is the continuation of life from
some other. Certain new forces are set in motion, but many come fully matured, ready under
the proper conditions to swing into fierce activity. Thus it is recorded that the Lemuro-Atlanteans
were the first who had a dynasty of spirit-kings. But, strange as this may seem to one
not grounded in the wisdom-religion, these rulers were not all good. Some were perfected
in evil, and formed a race of mighty sorcerers and magicians. When pupils were ready for
them, they were at hand. We receive what we invite. King Thevetat was of this order, and
it was under the influence of this king-demon that the Atlantean race "became a nation
of wicked magicians" (see 2:222). Between these, and those arrayed under the banner of
light, there was, of course, constant conflict, which ended in that race in the submersion
of the continent. But the war is still raging — in men individually and in the nations
at large.

The stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic floods are versions of this history. Legend and
tradition bear out these facts, and distorted accounts are to be found in Biblical literature.
The giants of Genesis are the historical Atlanteans of Lanka and so were the
Greek Titans (see 2:236).

One who has read and studied the Commentaries on the archaic doctrine, will easily recognise
in some Atlanteans, the prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel,
the Hamites, and all these tutti quanti of "accursed memory,'" as theological
literature expresses it: of those, in short, who have furnished posterity with the orthodox
types of Satan. — 2:272

The earliest tribes of the first Atlantean races born on the Lemurian continent separated
into the righteous and the unrighteous; those who worshiped the one unseen spirit of nature
— or the pantheists — and those who worshiped the spirits of the earth, the
dark anthropomorphic powers. Here, Blavatsky says, was the secret and mysterious origin
of all the subsequent and modern religions.

The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole or the Heaven of their Progenitors (the
Hyperborean Continent); the Atlanteans, toward the Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically
and terrestrially — whence breathe the hot passions blown into hurricanes by the
cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. — 2:274

The human period, as we understand the word "human," may properly be said to begin with
the fourth race.

Those who were hitherto semi-divine Beings, self-imprisoned in bodies which were human
only in appearance, became physiologically changed and took unto themselves wives who
were entirely human and fair to look at, but in whom lower, more material,
though sidereal, beings had incarnated. . . . (Lilith is the prototype of these
in the Jewish traditions). — 2:284-5

After Lemuria went down, men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of life
diminished. Nevertheless they were still giants. Physical beauty and strength reached
their climax toward the middle of the fourth subrace (see 2:319). By this time, too, they
had lost their inner vision, or third eye, which could then become active only when artificially
stimulated — a process known only to the old sages. But the consolidation and perfection
of the human frame caused this third eye to disappear from the outward anatomy, leaving
its witness — the pineal gland — in the brain. Psychically and spiritually,
however, its mental and visual perception lasted till nearly the end of the fourth race,
when, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, it died out.

When the divine powers became the handmaidens of the newly-awakened physiological and psychic
passions of the physical man, instead of their master, the third eye lost its power. Man's
sin consisted not in using these newly-developed powers, but in misusing them;
in making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a god, the fane of every spiritual iniquity.
Should the reader feel perplexed at the use of the term "spiritual" instead of "physical"
iniquity, he is reminded that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is simply the
irresponsible organ, the tool of the psychic, if not of the spiritual, man. And in the
case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the spiritual being which sinned, the spirit-element
being still the "Master" principle in man. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest
karma of the fifth race was generated by our monads. Read in this connection, Volume 2,
pages 295, 299, 302, 306. As has often been said, this is also the point beyond which
no new monads have incarnated; and as many centuries elapse between incarnations of the
same being, it is not difficult to grasp the teaching that many of us are working off
the effects of evil karmic causes, generated in Atlantean bodies. (See 2:303.)

Section 8

The civilization of the fourth race was magnificent and dazzling in physical development.
Many of the startling discoveries of our day, including aircraft, belonged to the ordinary
equipment of the Atlanteans. Complete records of this ancient race are said to exist and
will come to light at the proper time, but here and there can be found fragments which
are suggestive.

There is extant an account of a dialog between Midas the Phrygian, and Silenus, written
during the days of Alexander the Great. The former is told of a continent that had existed
in ancient times so immense that Asia, Europe, and Africa seemed like poor islands compared
with it. It was the last to produce animals and plants of gigantic magnitude.

There, said Silenus, men grew to double the size of the tallest man in his (the narrator's)
time, and they lived to twice as old an age. They had wealthy cities with temples, and
one of such (cities) held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver being
found there in great abundance. — The Secret Doctrine 2:760

Their intellects were giant-like as well as their bodies, and they had a knowledge of reincarnation,
which tenet was passed on to the fifth race. Also, as the third eye was awake during a
part of their history, they were aware of many of the finer forces which do not exist
consciously for this age, and which under the blighting effect of materialism have been
laughed to scorn. But the majority of that race elected to use this knowledge and power
for selfish purposes and prepared for themselves wholesale destruction. The great waters
swallowed them up. Although the sinking of the continent was inevitable, the destruction
need not have been so wholesale.

the "Deluge" overtook the Fourth, giant Race, not on account of their depravity, or because
they had become "black with sin," but simply because such is the fate of every continent,
which — like everything else under our Sun — is born, lives, becomes decrepit,
and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.

Thus the giants perished — the magicians and the sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular
tradition, but "all holy saved," and alone the "unholy were destroyed." This was due,
however, as much to the prevision of the "holy" ones, who had not lost the use
of their "third eye," as to Karma and natural law. Speaking of the subsequent race (our
Fifth Humanity), the commentary says:

"Alone the handful of those Elect, whose divine instructors had gone to inhabit that
Sacred Island — 'from whence the last Savior will come' — now kept
mankind from becoming one-half the exterminator of the other (as mankind does now
— H. P. B.). It (mankind) became divided. Two-thirds of it were ruled
by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the earth, who took possession of the easily
accessible bodies; one-third remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race
— the divine Incarnates. When the Poles moved (for the fourth time) this
did not affect those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like
the Lemurians — alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and 'were seen no
more.' . . . " — 2:350

A graphic account is given of the submersion of the main part of the continent in Volume
2, pages 427-8, but the total obliteration extended over enormous periods. It is on this
colossal first cataclysm which began gradually over 4 million years ago that traditions
of all the deluges are built, the Jews constructing their version on the event which took
place later on Poseidonis (1:439n, 2:751n). For after the main continent had vanished,
there was a large island, Ruta, which was submerged approximately 850,000 years ago, at
which time, it is stated, the Aryans were 200,000 years old (2:395). Then a smaller island,
Daitya, sank about 270,000 years ago (1:651), and finally the last remnant, Poseidonis,
referred to by Plato, disappeared about 11,000 years ago (2:324n).

Thus it will be seen that the races overlap by many thousands of years. Nothing is finally
destroyed in nature, until something else is established. And the processes move so silently
and, to our senses, so slowly, that it is often difficult to detect them — just as
one cannot see a tree grow, but sees only the results of growth. When a transition period
can be clearly recognized, as is the case in our time, for instance, it is evidence that
a new order is approaching rapidly.

The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater even than that of the Egyptians. It is
their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato's Atlantis, which built the first Pyramids
in the country, and that certainly before the advent of the "Eastern Aethiopians," as
Herodotus calls the Egyptians. — 2:429

In fact, the more remote the records, the more dazzling was the splendor. Among other arts
and sciences they had those of astronomy and symbolism, including a knowledge of the zodiac;
all of which they passed on to the fifth race (2:431).

The difficulties that historians have had in explaining the mature development of the Egyptians
from the most remote antiquity are cleared up by a consideration of the many facts brought
out in The Secret Doctrine regarding the Atlanteans and the enormous overlapping
of the two races.

Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed, yet we find
the last of the Atlanteans, still mixed up with the Aryan element, 11,000 years ago .
. . though in characters and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes
the new features of the younger race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human
races. — 2:444

The following gives a hint about the merging of the races and the origin of the prehistoric
Egyptians.

Nearly five hundred years before the actual era, Herodotus was shown by the priests of
Egypt the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs — piromis (the archi-prophets
or Maha-Chohans of the temples), born one from the other (without the intervention
of woman) who had reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues,
he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number, each
of which had his name, his history, and his annals. And they assured
Herodotus . . . that no historian could ever understand or write an account
of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of the three
dynasties that preceded the human — namely the dynasties
of the Gods, that of demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or giants. These "three dynasties"
are the three Races. — 2:369

. . . the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and "Romans" some thousand years
ago, were "remnants of the Atlanto-Aryans," i.e., the former, of the older, or
Ruta Atlanteans; the last-named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose
sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The human
Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the knowledge of
the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless,
they had preserved all their Archaic records. . . .

And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75 and 80,000 years old that the
Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. — 2:436

The Greeks were but the "dwarfed and weak remnants of that once glorious nation," the latest
seventh subrace of the Atlanteans, already swallowed up in one of the early subraces of
the Aryan stock; one that had gradually spread over the continent and islands of Europe,
as soon as they had begun to emerge from the seas.

Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two Races had sought refuge in the
days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly
emerged lands. The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin
soil; had divided into many families, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt
and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from that one
sub-race. Thousands of years later, other races — the remnants of the Atlanteans
— "yellow and red, brown and black" — began to invade the new continent. There
were wars in which the newcomers were defeated; and they fled, some to Africa, others
to remote countries. Some of these lands became in course of time — owing to new
geological convulsions — islands. — 2:743-4

The duration of the periods that separate the fourth from the fifth race is too tremendous
to make possible a detailed account of those times. During the course of the post-diluvian
ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the most terrible cataclysms,
so many races and nations were born, lived their time and died, leaving scarcely a trace
behind, that no description of value can be offered concerning them (see 2:437).

To return to the beginning of the fifth race, which has existed quite free from its parent
stem about a million years, making the life of a subrace about 210,000 years (2:435),
Stanza XII reads:

48. The Fifth Race produced from the Holy Stock (remained). It was ruled by Her
First Divine Kings. — 2:351

This race can trace its descent through the Atlanteans, from the more spiritual races of
the Lemurians, in whom the Sons of Wisdom had personally incarnated (2:318).

Blavatsky comments that history does not begin here, but living and ever-recurring tradition
does. What we call history does not go back further than the origins of our fifth subrace,
a few thousands of years (see 2:351; also G. de Purucker's Fundamentals of the Esoteric
Philosophy, pp. 239-40). "Even so-called 'universal' (?) history embraces but a tiny
field in the almost boundless space of the unexplored regions of our latest, fifth Root-Race"
(1:406).

"The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from the archaic records, will
be found correct, is not far distant. . . . The physical brain may forget events
within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections can never
desert the divine soul within us," upon whose tablets are printed in indelible characters
the pictures of all our mighty past. For the lower range of our being "its whispers may
be too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses;
yet the shadow of events that were, just as much as the shadows of events
that are to come, is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before the
mind's eye" (2:424-5).

As is evident in a universe which is a complete whole, of which man himself is an inseparable
part — a universe where order and fitness rule — there must always have been,
as there always will be, relations between all the parts. The endless varieties of this
humanity have been under the same influences as have the geological formations of their
times, as have the elements and the atmosphere — which influences have been expressed,
for instance, in the color of the skin and hair, the sense organs, the texture of their
bodies, etc.

One "Element" has been added in each round in the order of fire, air, water, earth. The
earth, as we know it now, had no existence before the fourth round, hundreds of millions
of years ago, the time of the commencement of our geological earth (1:252n). The same
order is repeated on a much smaller scale for each race. For instance, the humanities
developed coordinately with the elements, one of the latter being accentuated for each
race, which was physiologically adapted to meet it. Our fifth race is rapidly approaching
the fifth element, one which has more to do with metaphysics than with physics. But the
element to be perfected in the fifth round can only be foreshadowed in the fifth race
of the fourth round. Likewise, we, being of the fifth race, have five senses, but the
last sense will not be fully developed before the next round. Thus is everything repeated
again and again in nature over eternities, always on a more perfect scale. In the first
round the earth was ethereal; likewise in the first race of this round. In the third round
all became more compact, so again in the third root-race of this round (see 1:188-9).

The first race was speechless, being devoid of mind on our plane. The second had a sound
language composed of vowels alone. The third in the beginning had a kind of language which
was only a slight improvement on the various sounds in nature; but after the separation
into sexes in the latter part, speech began to be developed. Before this, men communicated
through what now would be called "thought-transference." Highly developed languages did
not come before the fourth race. In this our fifth, inflexional speech, the root of Sanskrit,
was in the beginning the only language (see 2:199-200).

Each race has its continent, as has been stated. The first was born on the Imperishable
Sacred Land, the "continent, or island, if so preferred, 'the cap of the North Pole',"
whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of the manvantara through each
round. "It is the cradle of the first man, and the dwelling of the last divine
mortal." Of this mysterious and sacred land it is said in one of the Commentaries, that
the "pole-star has its watchful eye upon it, from the dawn to the close of the twilight
of 'a day' of the great breath." (see 2:6, 372)

The second continent stretched out from the first southward and westward and has been called
the Hyperborean. Lemuria and Atlantis, as has been frequently stated, were the dwellings
of the third and fourth races. The fifth continent is America, but Europe and Asia Minor,
almost coeval with it, are generally referred to by the Indo-Aryan occultists as the fifth
(2:7-8). The Aryan race, however, was born and developed in the far north, though after
the sinking of the continent of Atlantis, its tribes emigrated further south into Asia.
Hence Prometheus (who is called the hero of the fifth race) is the son of Asia (2:768-9).

As has happened before, so will it be again. The human races are born one from the other,
develop, grow old, and die. Even now, under our very eyes, the new race and races are
preparing to be formed, and it is in America that the transformation will take place,
and has indeed already silently commenced — so silently, that for long millenniums
shall its pioneers, the peculiar children who will grow into peculiar men and women, be
regarded as abnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then as they increase, and their
numbers become with every age greater, one day they will awake to find themselves in a
majority. It is the present mankind who will then begin to be regarded as exceptional
mongrels, until these die out in their turn in civilized lands, surviving only in small
groups on islands — the mountain peaks of today — where they will finally die
out, perhaps millions of years hence.

This process of preparation for the sixth great race must last throughout the sixth and
seventh subraces. But the last remnants of the fifth continent will not disappear
until some time after the birth of the new race; when another and new
dwelling, the sixth continent, will have appeared above the new waters on the
face of the globe, so as to receive the stranger. To it also will migrate and on it will
settle all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster. Mankind
will not grow again into giant physical bodies, because while the evolution of the fourth
race led it down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the present
race is on its ascending arc; and the sixth will be rapidly growing out of bonds of matter
and even of flesh.

Thus it is the mankind of the new world — America, whose continent arose during the
palmy days of the great Atlantis (2:182) — whose mission and karma is to sow the
seeds for a forthcoming grander and far more glorious race than any we know of at present.
The cycles of matter will be succeeded by cycles of spirituality, and of fully-developed
mind. According to this cyclic law, the majority of the future mankind will be composed
of glorious adepts. Humanity is the child of cyclic destiny, and not one of its units
can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the responsibility of its cooperative
work with nature. In the words of a sage:

"The present is the Child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the Present. And yet,
O present moment! Knowest thou not that thou hast no parent, nor canst thou have a child;
that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say 'I am the
progeny of the departed moment, the child of the past,' thou hast become that past itself.
Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more the Present but verily
that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and the Future, the ever-living trinity
in one — the Maha-maya of the Absolute IS." — 2:446

Gertrude W. van Pelt (1856-1947) was born at Elizabeth, New
Jersey, and received her early education at Miss Ranney's Private School and at Holyoke
College, Massachusetts. She graduated from Cornell University in 1881 with a Bachelor
of Science degree, and later graduated from the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia.
This was followed by an internship at the Women's Hospital in Boston, and a period of
postgraduate medical study in Paris and Vienna.

In May 1893 Dr. van Pelt joined the Theosophical Society as a member of the Boston Lodge.
At the special request of Katherine Tingley, Dr. van Pelt came to the theosophical headquarters
at Point Loma in 1900, becoming Directress of Lomaland School and Academy, a post which
she held till 1932. She was a member of the Leader's Cabinet, a trustee of Theosophical
University from its inception in 1919, and in 1934 received from it the degree of Master
of Theosophy. Throughout her 54 years of service she was a regular contributer of theosophical
articles and booklets.